My experiences with Trillium1 this spring have left me with many thoughts, not only about how I engage with other life forms, but also about resilience and possibilities for healing from the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual fractures that life in this material dimension of Earth imposes at times.

Tennessee Valley Authority’s plans to complete an unfinished nuclear reactor near Scottsboro are again on hold as delays and cost overruns continue to plague work at its Watts Bar nuclear plant in Tennessee.TVA officials announced Thursday that construction of a second reactor at the Watts Bar plant in Spring City that was scheduled to be completed this year will not be finished until 2015. The cost of the project, estimated at $2.5 billion when work began in 2007, has grown to $4.2 billion.The delay will prevent TVA from beginning work this year to complete the Unit 1 reactor at Bellefonte nuclear plant east of Scottsboro, officials said.

The revived reactor, in Hollywood, Ala., is not expected to be completed before 2018 to 2020 — or about a half-century after the project was first announced, and following nearly a quarter-century of limbo.

In February, about 100 citizens showed up for a hearing on oil and gas drilling regulations proposed by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. A procedural wrinkle created in January by an administrative decision of the state’s incoming Governor Haslam opened the door for a second hearing on the proposed regulations, scheduled for next Thursday, April 28, 2011at 6 pm at TDEC’s field office in Knoxville.

Tennessee groups that began their collaboration for the first hearing have continued meetings to discuss drilling issues in the state. Next week they’ll gather again to give further testimony on specific concerns.

While much public concern about oil and gas well drilling nationwide focuses on hydrofracturing, there are many other serious issues with extraction to be addressed, such as casing deterioration of abandoned wells and damages to land and vegetation secondary to well pad construction.